


[5 things you’re not afraid of]

by Lila17



Category: SANDERSON Brandon - Works, Skyward - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Missing Scene, so i didn’t tag, spensa gets into a fight or two but idk if it counts as graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:27:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23528383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lila17/pseuds/Lila17
Summary: 4 things Spensa isn’t afraid of, and one thing she is.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 30





	[5 things you’re not afraid of]

  1. dangling limbs



without even thinking about it, she shifts position again so her arm isn’t dangling over the bed anymore, and when she realizes why it’s like an electric shock. she’s scared, because if she hangs her arm over the bed then something could grab it and that would be creepy.

she rolls over again almost violently, shoving her arm down until it reaches the ground, and stays like that for the rest of the night. her heart beats panickedly fast. she doesn’t want to sleep like this, it’s not even comfortable, but she doesn’t want to be a coward more.

she does it again every night for the next couple weeks until she’s used to it, and even spends a night curled up underneath her bed instead of on top, just to prove that she can. and it’s worth it, because spensa nightshade is never scared of drooping her limbs over the edge of the bed ever again.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


  1. the dark



It’s the same thing when she starts going out into the caverns alone. she’s fine with being out there in general- she knows her way around the different caves just fine, and it would be impossible for anyone or anything to sneak up on her with all the loose pebbles and rocks and jumps you have to make. but also, it’s dark.

The first time she goes out alone she has a little lamp turned up to the maximum brightness, until she realizes that the shadows where the lamp doesn’t reach are still putting her on edge.

And immediately she thinks _scared, huh? are you scared? turn out the light, do it, you won’t._

The light flickers off in a second. Then she’s standing stock-still in a cave that’s so much darker. And she’s not scared, she’s _not_ , so she keeps walking and figures out where to go mostly by feel and a lot of squinting.

she’s not scared of the dark.

spensa keeps going out and turning her light off day after day, getting comfortable with not being able to see anything and slowly turning it into something useful by catching rats that can’t see her coming either. darkness becomes quiet and comfortable and useful, and a hundred other things she doesn’t mind.

She’s not scared of the dark.

  
  
  
  


  1. getting hurt



Spensa bares her teeth at the group of kids, fists clenched. “He _wasn’t_ a _coward_ ,” she says through gritted teeth.

“He was and everyone knows it,” the kid says right back. “The DDF says so.” The rest of the kid’s friends laugh behind their hands. They’ve been teasing her about it more since the teacher covered the Battle of Alta, and none of them know any pilots personally they’re just repeating what the teacher said, but it doesn’t matter because the teacher is wrong.

“Did he ever do it at home?” another boy calls out. “Run away from a spider? Make your mom kill it?”

“He didn’t! He was brave!” Spensa screams back, moving a half-step forward without even thinking about it. Then she stalls, her eyes flickering around the ring of kids- there’s five of them. She’s not sure she can take them all on at once.

“Aw look, she’s scared,” someone says, and her face goes cold. “Come on, we’ve got better stuff to do. Let’s go-” he says, turning to go, and Spensa yells and jumps on him from behind. He jerks and goes down hard, and then they’re all in a messy, thrashing pile. 

By the time they all finally walk away, she hurts all over. It takes her a few minutes to roll onto her side and stagger inside, and the teacher screams and calls her mother. She probably looks horrible.

But- but what does it even matter? She barely even feels it. Her father wasn’t a coward and neither is she, and she’s going to prove it.

She does it again the next week once she’s mostly healed. The very next time a kid makes a crack at her, she just jumps on him without any preamble. He screeches like a baby, and she gets some good hits in but so does he before the teachers pull them apart and they hurt, yeah, but she’s not afraid of that. Her dad died and that probably hurt worse, and now all these people just walk around and spit on him like he’s nothing.

She takes up enough space that the other kids start watching what they say around her ( _finally_ ) and the teachers start pulling her mother in for disciplinary talks. Her mother turns around and has talks with her, too, snappish and somewhere between angry and concerned, and Spensa knows she’s making it hard on her but she doesn’t stop- she just gets smarter, better, tries to freak people out more before a fight can even happen. She doesn’t stop.

All the greatest warriors are fearless in battle. So should she.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


  1. death



The most important thing to not be afraid of is something she’s never had the chance to practice. All she has instead are a hundred unspoken promises. 

They’re whispered during the day and at night, burning under her skin, _don’t flinch don’t pull away if it happens, don’t._

They all have to be ready to die for Igneous, but she has to be ready especially. It’s an honor to fight for this cause and it would be an honor to die, and sometimes it overwhelms her and all she can think is _if it happens, don’t be afraid. Don’t._

She can’t do anything to practice it beforehand. All she can do is think, sketch out how it could happen a thousand different ways and promise herself,

_I will, I will, I will._

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  





Spensa isn’t afraid of dangling limbs over the bed while she sleeps, the dark, getting hurt, or death. But losing people reaches out and digs something inside her, and the awful thing is that this one doesn’t get easier with practice. 

For all of them, Bim, Morningtide, Hurl, even her father, it’s like someone just reached in and ripped them out of the universe. And it- hurts, and one day Spensa wakes up and realizes that she is completely terrified of losing anyone else.

She’s terrified and yet she can’t think of a single other response that wouldn’t just feel worse. How could she not be afraid of this? How could she possibly do anything else? And when the time comes, the moment she made all her promises about, it slides in through a chink in the armor that she never even knew was there. She’s not scared to die, she’s been prepared for that for years.

_But what will it do to them if you do?_

She ejects, and the raw relief on Jorgen’s face is so intense that it feels like a punch to the gut, one of those old ones that she’s not afraid of. He hugs her hard like he’s not even aware that he’s doing it, like he needs to check she’s still real, and she lets him. But only a few minutes later he needs to go because he’s still a pilot cadet and she’s not, and it feels like everything inside of her just whooshes away along with the people she lived for. 

A week later she gets a repeat and finds out that she’s not scared of death at all, not when it matters. They have so much to lose but they win, she wins, and she’s not a coward but she hugs everyone else with shaking arms after it’s all over. Shaking, they’re all shaking a little.

Spensa Nightshade is not a coward- she isn’t afraid of hanging her arms over the sides of beds, of the dark, of getting hurt, or of death. But she’s afraid of losing people, and the two can coexist.

She’s alright with it.

**Author's Note:**

> decided this tag needed more godforsaken content. It turned out that I had (very shockingly) actually already written a bunch of skyward fics that had for one reason or another never been posted. Wrote this months ago, ended it with a long keyboard smash because I thought it was terrible and despaired for the fate of man (i.e. my writing ability), realized it wasn't actually half bad, now we're here.


End file.
